I.13.3
DOORS AND WINDOWS
The location of all exits and entrances is treated with the
greatest care, not only the opening by which each individual
structure is made accessible from the outside, but also all
the doors giving access, internally, from one room to
another. There are altogether some 290 doors shown on the
various buildings of the Plan, and only five true oversights
that I can find: two doors in the House of the Gardener
(fig. 426)[263]
and three in the Monks' Bake and Brew House
(fig. 462)[264]
are not shown.
The architect does not lavish quite the same degree of
attention on the designation of gates that give access from
court to court through enclosing fences. Here, as in the
case of the privies, he appears to discriminate between the
higher and lower levels of monastic polity. A gate in the
passage that connects the Abbot's House with the Church
(fig. 251) permits the Abbot to inspect the buildings lying
east of the Church, and at the same time admits the novices
and the sick to the Church on the days of the great religious
festivals.[265]
A gate in the fence that separates the grounds of
the House of the Physicians from those of the House for
Bloodletting insures that the physicians have free access to
the structures that come within their professional care.
Gates in appropriate places of the enclosure of the Outer
School (fig. 407) permit the headmaster to communicate
with his own quarters (addorsed to the northern aisle of the
Church) and allow the students to attend the divine services
by passing through the quarters of the visiting monks into
the northern transept of the Church.
Yet one looks in vain for gates in any of the fences that
enclose the various installations of the large service yard in
the western tract of the monastery site, with its stables and
houses for the emperor's staff. Here, again, I believe we
cannot speak of these omissions as oversights. The draftsman
was eager to make it clear that these installations
should be surrounded by walls or fences, but the builder,
as he adapted the elements to the terrain, would have to
determine exactly where these enclosures should be made
accessible by gates.
He used the same discretion in the designation of
windows. Arcaded openings are delineated with the greatest
care (Monks' Cloister, cloisters in the Infirmary and the
Novitiate, porches in the Abbot's House);[266]
and to make
unmistakably clear what he had in mind, he switched from
vertical to horizontal projection. In all other instances,
windows are omitted—with one exception, the Scriptorium
(fig. 99), where to neglect the appropriate conditions for
lighting would have had disastrous consequences.[267]
Openings
for ventilation are indicated in the Monks' Privy (fig.
497), again to stress an important functional need. Had
windows been shown in such buildings as the Dormitory,
the Refectory, and the Cellar, they would have impaired
the clarity of the internal layout of these structures. In the
majority of the other houses, windows could not even be
expected, because these houses belonged to a building type
that had no windows, as we shall show later.[268]
